This blog runs parallel to a new poetry blog 'Poetry Pinfold' (poetrypinfold.blogspot.com), and a new blog with poems in Dutch (bartnooteboomgedichten.blogspot.com)

Saturday, July 26, 2014

156. Montaigne and the mask of convention

At first, Montaigne denounced the mask of
social convention as make-belief, a lie, hypocrisy, an assault on truth. That
motivated him to retire to his castle. Later, however, he adopted the mask as a
necessary device, an interface and demarcation, between the make-believe of
social functioning, as one part of human virtue, and authenticity and integrity
of the self, as another, perhaps higher part of virtue. This is how Montaigne
reconciled his being an independent thinker with his functioning as mayor of
Bordeaux.

There is a connection here with the earlier
series in this blog on Eastern and Western philosophy. Montaigne’s predicament
may reflect the tension between on the one hand a Taoist commitment to the purity
and autonomy of nature, and on the other hand a Confucian commitment to social
responsibility, with its artificiality and make-belief.

How satisfactory would it be, Montaigne’s
ironic, dispassionate social commitment, as a duty, without fight or self-sacrifice,
without conviction other than taking one’s responsibility and wanting to
preserve the peace? The Taoist would rather abstain from social
artificialities, in wuwei, than betray truth, nature and what is
genuine. The Taoist rejects the mask as the early Montaigne did.

My view on the matter is this. One should act
on one’s beliefs, seriously, passionately even, not ironically, but with the
pragmatist stance that the oppositon one meets can feed, refresh and transform
ideas and beliefs. That also can be a Nietzschean joy. Counter to Montaigne: it
can yield the excitement of discovery. But it is not a Nietzschean will to
power. It entails the tolerance of give and take in dialogue, in debate.
However, that is not without limit. If conviction cannot be shifted by
reasonable debate, one should stick to it.

Surely, Montaigne is right in refusing to
sacrifice or violate the self for the sake of social calling or duty. As I
proposed in item 63 of this blog, Levinas seems to go too far in the opposite
direction, surrendering the self ‘as a hostage’ to the other. But apparently
Montaigne sees social action only as a sink, something one contributes to, not
also as a source, something to learn from.

As I noted before (in item 140), Montaigne
makes the error of seeing only one direction in the traffic between outward
manifestation and inside flourishing. Others are not only receptacles for one’s
ideas, compassion and sacrifice, but also founts of influence and opposition
that help one to escape from one’s prejudice and myopia, and thereby to
flourish. Niezsche also failed to recognize this (see item 60). Certainly,
others may do more harm than good to the self, but that is no reason not to
give it a chance, in seeking the good.

Did Taoism also make this mistake, of not
seeing that action in the world, with other people, feeds the development of
the individual?

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